I don't get what you don't get. An arbitration agreement is a contract, and it can be enforced by a court like any other contract. If you
contract to pay $10,000 for a home improvement, you can't change your mind after the work is done and ask a court to decide how much you should pay. If you agree in a contract to arbitrate a dispute, you can't change your mind after the dispute arises and ask a court to decide the issue instead. Well, in both cases you can ask but you won't get far.

I don't know anything about religious arbitration. I do a lot of certain kinds of secular arbitration, and it can be a vast improvement over going to court when the parties to the arbitration agreement all are adequately sophisticated. Consumer and employer/employee arbitration, discussed by the prior Times story, are indeed a much bigger deal. And the way the law has developed in that area in recent years is shockingly unjust.

(If there's a valid and fair arbitration agreement, it's a terrible idea to let the parties jump ship on the agreement and go to court partway through. Most obviously, it lets a party bail if they think the particular case is going against them. It also upsets everyone's expectations about how the substantive agreement is going to be enforced. In many contexts, arbitration is part of a long-term contractual relationship and helps define that relationship; going to court would change the relationship quite a bit.)

I'm perplexed at the way some companies let you opt out of arbitration, with some paperwork. Why do they do that, when they clearly don't have to? I have to assume it's some kind of fig leaf to let them say "see, we didn't really force arbitration on these consumers, they totally could have found the opt-out form in the file cabinet in the locked lavatory".

The level of abuse that the mandatory arbitration clauses seem to be explicitly designed for is high enough that it really makes me wonder if we wouldn't be better off just saying that the right to take things to court is one of the rights that people literally can't sign away. I know that would never happen legislatively, and even if it did the existence of the Roberts court would mean there was no reason to try. But it is the sort of thing that makes me think that people should resorting to the Argakov solution* a lot more often when it comes to these kinds of contracts.

*"All disputes must be resolved by arbitration conducted by first party's college friend John..."

I don't have a lot of professional experience with arbitration -- some, but it's not at all a specialty. I get uncomfortable about it on two fronts -- the obvious consumer problem, where to do ordinary day-to-day commerce, you have to sign away your right to go to court. That, I think, should not be allowed. There should be some level of comparable power between the parties before one can sign away substantive rights like that.

But the other thing I find generally troublesome is the lack of appealability. If a trial court does something nutty, it can get fixed. Findings of fact are unlikely to get disturbed much, but where the trial court gets the law wrong, that can be corrected. A nutty arbitration decision, on the other hand, you're very much stuck with. I see the argument for letting people agree to streamline the dispute resolution process rather than handling everything with the full formalities of a court, but I don't see why it should be so much more insulated from review.

I linked to some of our interesting Montana law -- as hostile to arbitration as the US Sup Ct will let them be (and actually probably a little more hostile than they can be, as there seems to be some doubt that our venue provision will stand up there) -- in the recent CT thread on arbitration.

Certainly the rule in this country is that religious arbitration cannot be used to enforce something contrary to secular law. (I have a feeling gambling debts used to be like that, too: couldn't be collected in a civil case).

The previous Archbishop of Canterbury got himself in a richly deserved shitload of trouble by trying to show off on the subject.

What seems to me to raise worrying issues of principle is where all parties consent to an injustice -- eg the issue of Sharia compliant wills. Now, in a country where it is perfectly legal to leave all your money to the local cats' home rather than to your children* it follows that it is perfectly legal to leave your male children twice as much as your female ones. If you do this because you are an asshole, or because you have quarelled violently with all your daughters, that seems to me different to the case where you do it because you believe it is your religious obligation. (Obviously there is some overlap, in that anyone who could believe that was their religious obligation has an asshole problem. But.)

Lawyers who offer their services in making such "sharia-compliant" wills seem to me wicked, if legal. There was a very satisfying row here a year or two ago when the solicitors' professional body put out a paper telling people how to do this,and had to withdraw it after a furious protest. Yay to norm policing. Doesn't mean that there aren't even now solicitors doing that nasty stuff but I think it's progress that they're doing it under the radar.

What seems to me to raise worrying issues of principle is where all parties consent to an injustice -- eg the issue of Sharia compliant wills. Now, in a country where it is perfectly legal to leave all your money to the local cats' home rather than to your children* it follows that it is perfectly legal to leave your male children twice as much as your female ones. If you do this because you are an asshole, or because you have quarelled violently with all your daughters, that seems to me different to the case where you do it because you believe it is your religious obligation.

Huh. This is probably one of those transatlantic norm differences that isn't really resolvable, but I'm not seeing the problem with this. If the law allows a rich person to divide their estate as they see fit, so be it, whether or not their motivations are religious. Which is not to say that the law is actually morally right to allow that, or indeed to allow significant intergenerational wealth transfers at all. I understand that at least some Scandinavian countries have confiscatory estate taxes precisely to prevent this.

as belle waring suggested over at your local newspaper's comments section but everyone has a PhD crooked timber, I think some people need to take one for the team. hide a sharia law arbitration in your wood flooring purchase agreement, give your secret confederate shitty floors, then let them sue you but be forced into SHARIA LAW IS COMING TO CLEVELAND! Or fire someone from your nation of islam detroit charter school unjustly, on racial grounds, have her appeal to the public about her employment discrimination case in which BLACK PEOPLE ARE USING SHARIA LAW AGAINST WHITE PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY'RE THE REAL RACISTS!!1! natural blondes under 24 should probably be drafted here for maximum effect. for real, one of the women in the article was fired from her school job in a way that appeared to clearly violate labor law but was forced into christian arbitration. I think that in this economy the "she could have gotten a different job" arguments are weaksauce. also, the bassist from iron maiden should weigh in here with facts even though no one else from the band comments here anymore. "I have too much knowledge to drop on y'all lest you be crushed. also, my amazing proof that arbitration is a force for good is slightly too long to fit in the margins of this pop-up window."

I'm on knifecrime island! layover on narnia to dulles. it seems like everyone working at this cafe is croatian or some shit? do no knifecrime islanders want this jerb? also, I have seen like 8 really good-looking men today.
I was not expecting that. one never is, really. as long as I can conquer my urge to go into the hermès shop and buy my sister a scarf I can't afford because I failed to wish her happy birthday in time I'll be ok. I go into fugue states in expensive stores sometimes it is really bad. better than drinking tho...

25. I expect everybody working at that cafe is in fact Croatian or whatever. Fifteen years ago they'd have been Filipina or South Indian, but tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Native knifecrimers do a load of catering jobs, but there are some categories they won't touch apparently (illegally low pay? I'm not sure.) Airport cafes are one of them.

The phrase struck out in 25 should certainly be adopted as a sub-header by CT.

You know the rules. bad teeth, knives, pigfucker prime minister, rain, but in exchange we get really good electrical wiring standards, national healthcare, and a widely disseminated culture of being really obsessed with music.

Not just airport cafés. I live in a fairly Polish bit of London, and it sometimes seems like everyone apart from me is eastern or Central European. Which I am totally fine with -- given that I'm married to an afore-mentioned Central European, it'd be majorly dickish not to be -- but the density of Slavic language speech all around is pretty amazing sometimes.

A while back, I was talking to a lawyer in a bar and he was telling me about a guy who asked him to set up a will or trust or something that would, for OG war on Christmas reasons, disinherit a spouse in favor of the sons. He said refused to help the guy out of his office but seemed to take it for granted that any lawyer who wanted do could have done what the man asked.

30: Beth Din judgments are legally enforced, generally, with the interesting exception of child support and child custody. The theory is that the spouses have consented to a Beth Din arbitration, but the children cannot consent. The same rule applies for Christian and Sharia disputes. As with anything in the U.S., there may be variations among the states.

A colleague of mine handled a business dispute at a Beth Din once. He said it was basically the same as other kinds of business arbitrations except that all of the lawyers and arbitrators were Jewish.

Which reminds me of the coolest lawyer job ever, which is Devil's Advocate. There is an adversarial trial to determine whether a candidate for sainthood actually performed miracles. There was a case in the last decade or so in my city, and the lawyers gave a talk about it afterwards.

Since the issue hinged on medical evidence, the Church called on Latin-fluent med mal lawyers to take the sides. They both wanted to be the Devil's Advocate, of course, but one of them was stuck representing the rather boring saint-to-be.

Usually the lawyers argue about whether the doctor's incompetence caused the patient to die, or whether it was just an odd coincidence that he died on the operating table. In this case, they argued about whether the prayers to the saint caused the patient to recover from cancer, or whether it was just a coincidence. The Devil's Advocate was proud that the Court had ruled his statistical evidence and expert testimony to be admissible ,which consisted of academic studies and an expert report, translated into Latin, about the percentage of patients that recover from that kind of cancer without benefit of a miracle. However, in the end the miracle worker was canonized.

The supposedly perfidious EU prevents all us enlightened topless types* from being barred from the courts as consumers. Meanwhile in my particular neck of the woods the spouse can claim 1/3 (or 1/2 if no kids). Children don't get a specific entitlement but they can petition the courts on the basis that the parent failed in their moral duty to make proper provision.

*actual toplessness not in my line at all, I already have enough areas that have to be covered in sunblock without adding the tracts of land. Sunburn there, no thanks.

Google still links to it, but IIRC from the email they sent out when they added an arbitration clause, you were only supposed to be able to opt out for the first 30 days.

I wonder how they handled that for employment contracts. When I had an offer there they refused to let strike out the arbitration clause from the contract and I ended up taking another offer. When they added the clause in the first place, did they go around giving employees 30 days to opt out of amending their employment contract with an arbitration clause? Can you do that? That seems bogus, but not all that much more bogus than changing terms of service and giving people 30 days to opt out.

45 -- The right to opt out is going to be in the arb clause itself, I'd expect. I've never seen one with it.

I'll probably jinx in by mentioning it here, but I'm in the process of getting engaged to do a commercial arbitration. Against a BVI sub of a Moldovan state-affiliated company, contract performed in Kurdistan. The proceeding is in London, and in English. Hooray for mandatory arbitration clauses.

33: but the density of Slavic language speech all around is pretty amazing sometimes.

It's weird to think you could have written this exact sentence 50 or 60 years ago in Northeast Minneapolis, but now you'd have to change it to Somali/Oromo language speech. Now that I think of it, a Somali/Polish fusion restaurant is just what Mpls. needs.

One thing I'll always miss is walking up to my office at my old job and looking out the window on a sunny spring afternoon and seeing little groups of Somali women sitting on the grass in the park below and chatting, while their kids played soccer or swung on the swingset. With the light rail going by.

Funnily, enough, 50 years ago, there would have been a lot of Polish in my small home town in Scotland. To this day, two of the three working mens clubs in the town are Polish or Polish-origin. I suspect as a percentage of the local population way lower than the percentage local to where I live now, but their impact was significant.

Actually, my immediate neighbours are mostly Somali. The block of houses immediately next the block of flats I live in are all Somali. But definitely Polish as the dominant local 'minority' language, although I'd only have to walk a mile or so before the dominant language would be Punjabi.

On one of the tube map versions, there's a cluster of Japanese around Ealing Common, which I was already subconsciously aware of as there are a lot of Japanese people who do the weekly food shop in the same supermarket as me, and a lot of really very good small Japanese restaurants around Ealing.

Hey, that map reminds me of something I've always wondered: why is London so far upriver? I mean, I guess it's the norm in Europe (no idea about elsewhere) for major cities to be not directly on the ocean: Rome, Athens, etc. But in the US, cities near the ocean are generally on the ocean (Philly is the major exception I can think of, but of course it's in a landlocked state; it's as close to the ocean as a city in Penn's colony could be).

Is it simply that the European cities developed in an era of smaller ships, and the benefits of being a bit inland outweighed the lack of deep water ports?

Applying the lessons I've learned from life (which is to say Civ), there aren't enough resources on sea tiles to make a city grow huge. At most, you might get two whales, some pearls, and (late game) four oil. While you want cities on the sea, especially if you are British or live in a world set to "Archipelago", you want to maximize land area while doing that.

63. It's navigable for normal sized ships, at least as far as the East End, even today. Yes, European cities grew up in times of smaller ships. Paris was accessible to Vikings. York was a port. So was Brugge before Zeebrugge. If you can built your ports upriver, it makes them more defensible. Most of the eat coast American rivers are a bit small to do that, but not all. Why the French built their main American port at New Orleans rather than up river I can't say; they didn't do that at Quebec.

"In 2012 London was the second largest port in the United Kingdom by tonnage handled (43.7 million), after Grimsby and Immingham (60 million).[10] The Port of London however handles the most non-fuel cargo of any port in the UK (at 32.2 million tonnes in 2007). "

So 63.last is wrong.

Ditto, Glasgow, which is pretty far inland, I suppose, but had major shipyards that could construct battleships and liners, right in the western end of the centre of the city.

Oh, I'm fully aware of that. It's just that, to American eyes, it's weirdly inland. And I think Rome and Paris still demonstrate my point: when they developed, they were accessible by seagoing vessels (although neither was primarily a port); now, not so much.

That said, come to think of it, Brooklyn/Manhattan is kind of the London model: the Hudson is an estuary up to the Tappan Zee, but it's still miles from the docks of NYC to open ocean.

If my high school history teacher is to be believed, Richmond, Virginia, is where it is because that's as far inland as the ships could go before running into a bunch of rocks. And Williamsburg (the non-hipster one) is where it is so that people could go to Busch Gardens.

Most of the original 13 state capitals are inland ports, either at the point where the major river or estuary becomes navigable, or in the middle of the state: Providence, Hartford, Albany, Trenton, Harrisburg, Annapolis, Richmond, Raleigh, Columbia. Also true of Montgomery, Jackson, Sacramento, and Olympia, District of Columbia, and most of the state capitals on the Mississippi/Missouri from Baton Rouge to Pierre and St. Paul.

Rome doesn't really: Ostia and Portus were developed while ships were still pretty small. The Tiber isn't much of a river compared to the Seine or the Thames. Magdeburg, miles up the Elbe, might be a better example. It was a Hanseatic city.

77: Yeah, the rule I was going to generalize was that you want your capital to be accessible by oceangoing vessels, but not to the point where enemies can easily bombard from the sea. Whereas a port city may be a bit inland, but wants deep water and not to be so far inland that some other city can steal the business.

78: Is my memory wrong that, even in Imperial times, you'd have occasional ships coming into Rome? I know about Ostia, I just thought that, unlike Athens/Piraeus, it was at least possible for ships to reach the capital.

Assuming you rush to develop Navigation and built a fleet before somebody gets a bunch of destroyers, if you can put the guns of six ships of the line on any city, you can take it with just those ships and a pikeman. Two ships of the line can take on a destroyer, but you've really lost your advantage by that point.

80.2. Small ships, yes, but not enough tonnage to supply a major city. Small ships in antiquity meant basically big boats in modern terms. They could probably get to all kinds of places, but Rome in the early Imperial period had a population of about a million people. You couldn't support them with a fleet of boats.

And you probably won't even have to start the war. If you have six ships of the line and only pikemen in your cities, somebody (probably the Romans or Russians, who are both assholes) will invade you. Unless you share a land border with them, you just shoot the invasion force out of the water and go take a city or two from them.

? I mean, I guess it's the norm in Europe (no idea about elsewhere) for major cities to be not directly on the ocean: Rome, Athens, etc. But in the US, cities near the ocean are generally on the ocean (Philly is the major exception I can think of, but of course it's in a landlocked state; it's as close to the ocean as a city in Penn's colony could be).

As well as the points above, bear in mind that everywhere in the UK is near the ocean, by US standards. Like, nowhere more than 70 miles from the coast. Presumably it's not objectionable that there should be some major inland cities. In the UK, that means you're going to have major inland cities near the ocean.

Cities should be at a crossroads, right? So think of the Thames: it's navigable up to a certain point, and it's feasible to bridge down to a certain point. So the city of London lies somewhere in the stretch that is both navigable and bridgeable. Similarly I think the Seine and Paris, although god knows there's a long bit in Braudel about this if you really care.

Presumably American cities are closer to the sea because (a) bridging was easier when they were settled, (b) less likely to lie on a major river as such, and (c) more dependent on trans-oceanic flows of resources and less dependent on intra-continental flows than European cities.

think of the Thames: it's navigable up to a certain point, and it's feasible to bridge down to a certain point. So the city of London lies somewhere in the stretch that is both navigable and bridgeable.

IIRC another good reason for building London Bridge was to stop anyone (specifically Danes) navigating any further up the river than it.

"I live in a fairly Polish bit of London, and it sometimes seems like everyone apart from me is eastern or Central European. Which I am totally fine with -- given that I'm married to an afore-mentioned Central European, it'd be majorly dickish not to be -- but the density of Slavic language speech all around is pretty amazing sometimes."

Ha. I was in Prague a few days ago, and I am pretty sure that you hear English spoken in a higher percentage of conversations if you walk through Staromestska namesti than you would if you walked through Piccadilly Circus.

I'm in Savannah, Georgia right now, in a hotel on the river. It was bizarre to see a huge cargo ship steaming up the river given that the river is only about as wide as the ship is long. The pilot must really know his or her stuff.

63: I've personally seen a 25,000 tonne aircraft carrier tied up at Greenwich. Including the unluckiest man in the Royal Navy, the sailor who drew anchor watch the night the ship pulled into...London.

More seriously, the secret sauce here is the tide. With a relatively constrained channel and a high tidal range you can get deep water a long, long way inland - look where Antwerp and Hamburg are (and to think of it, isn't New Orleans getting on for a hundred miles upriver?). Because moving goods on the tide is always much easier than on the road, you want to put the port as far upriver as the tide will take you.

I can't figure it out myself, by New Orleans has a very complicated access to water. Clearly it is a long way from the mouth of the Mississippi, but it isn't clear to me that ships actually go all that way in the river. There look to be canals that provide a much more direct route. But google maps doesn't actually say "This canal supports ships of ocean-going size."

They plugged that, I see. But it looks like you can still go from Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi. That seems closer. I remember driving over it when we were kids. We called it Lake Potty-train. Anyway, that's a really long bridge.